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Saudis invest in Israeli startups, Florida Chabad destroyed in fire, Brooklyn rabbi punched in broad daylight, 75% of Jews want to keep abortion legal, and Glenn Close joins the Mossad (sort of).
THE WEEK IN POLITICS The government of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett may collapse within a month. (Getty) Our senior political reporter, Jacob Kornbluh, shares what’s in his notebook...
Saudi Arabia has made a large investment in Israeli tech startups–through a firm headed by Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner’s new private-equity firm, Affinity Partners, raised $3 billion, including $2 billion from a fund led by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been widely condemned for his record on human rights.
The Israeli government is facing a fight for survival as the Knesset returns Monday for its summer session. The coalition government led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid lost its 61-seat majority last month and the Islamist party Ra’am has yet to recommit to voting with the coalition after recent clashes between Israeli police and rioters on the Temple Mount.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now leader of the opposition, is on the hunt for another member to defect and help him secure a majority vote to dissolve the government and send the country back to the ballot box. Other possibilities include an alternative government of conservative and religious parties without another election. Israeli news reports quoted Bennett associates predicting the current government would last just about a month.
'I don’t just want to be a friend of Israel,' said David Brog. “I want to be a leader on Israel.' He led Christians United for Israel. Now he’s running as a Jewish candidate for Congress: David Brog, a former executive director of the largest pro-Israel evangelical group, is competing in a Republican primary to flip Nevada’s 1st District red in the midterm elections. A third cousin of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Brog said he would be a leader in Congress on Israel. Read the story ➤
ALSO FROM THE FORWARD ‘Am Yisrael High’ | The history of Jews and marijuana goes back a lot farther than you think:“This was a popular intoxicant, so Jews used it,” said Eddy Portnoy (pictured above), the curator of a new exhibit that features a 15th-century document mentioning our people’s weed habits and other discoveries of Biblical-era cannabinoids. More recently, in the 1960s, an Israeli became the “father of cannabis research” and Jews were at the forefront of the movement to legalize the drug. Read the story ➤
Related: Why cannabis provides a unique opportunity for the kosher industry
Opinion | My family was murdered in Austria during the Holocaust. Should I accept the country’s offer of citizenship? The grandmother Erik Sommer was named after was one of two members of her family who survived the Holocaust. She was an optimist who believed in the inherent goodness of “most people,” Sommer says in an essay agonizing over whether he should take advantage of a new law permitting him to obtain Austrian citizenship. “I wondered if I would be desecrating the memory of my Nana Erika and her murdered family members by becoming a citizen of the nation that destroyed them.” Read his essay ➤
A.J. Jacobs on Jews, puzzles and how Sondheim changed American crosswords forever:After living biblically for a year and thanking everyone involved with making his morning coffee, A.J. Jacobs is back with “The Puzzler,” a book in which he learns about Rubik’s Cube lube, plays chess with Garry Kasparov and tours CIA headquarters to solve a cipher statue. “Judaism is a lot about curiosity and asking questions,” Jacobs told our PJ Grisar, “which are at the heart of puzzles.” Read the interview ➤
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY Niv Sultan (left) and Glenn Close in the new season of 'Tehran,' an Israeli spy thriller. (Apple TV+) 🔥 A Saturday night fire destroyed the Chabad of Tallahassee, which serves Florida State University. No one was hurt but Torah scrolls and hundreds of books were lost; officials are investigating the cause of the fire. “First I cried,” said Rabbi Schneur Zalman Oirechman “Then I immediately realized, God doesn’t do anything unless he first provides the healing.” (Tallahassee Democrat)
🤰 Three-quarters of American Jews said abortion should remain legal in a new survey. A separate study found that white evangelicals are the only religious group that overwhelmingly opposes abortion, at 73%. (Religion News Service)
👉 Former New York Mayor Ed Koch led a painful double life as a closeted gay man, according to a new project published over the weekend by The New York Times. “It’s a story that has never been fully told,” tweeted Carolyn Ryan, who was recently named one of the paper’s next managing editors. It captures “the personal toll of a compartmentalized life, and the tradeoffs between ambition and honesty that shaped Koch’s political career and his life.” (New York Times)
🏫 A member of the New York City Council wants public school students to spend a day learning Jewish history. “Focusing on Holocaust education is very critical,” said Shaun Abreu, the child of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. (eJewishPhilanthropy)
🇷🇺 Russia celebrates May 9 as a sacred commemoration of the Soviet defeat of the Nazis. President Vladimir Putin used the occasion to warn of an “absolutely unacceptable threat” on the country’s borders, though he did not mention Ukraine by name. “You are fighting for the motherland,” he told a crowd of thousands of soldiers, “so that no one will forget the lessons of World War II and there will be no place in the world for hangmen, executioners and the Nazis.” (Times of Israel, New York Times)
🚓 A man making antisemitic comments – including “the Nazis should have killed you Jews” – punched and kicked a Brooklyn rabbi, sending him to the hospital. The incident occurred in broad daylight on Friday; the police are offering a $3,500 reward for help locating the attacker. (WABC)
📣 A YouTuber with 1.9 million followers said he wanted someone pushing a button “to wipe Jews off the face of the Earth.” A spokesperson for the Southern Law Poverty Center condemned YouTube and Twitter for allowing him to continue on their platforms, saying the two companies “have played such a big role in radicalizing extremists.” (Byline Times)
⛰️ The American Alpine Club is renaming its annual award after discovering that one of the individuals honored had expressed antisemitic views, including that Jews lack the skills to be successful mountain climbers. (Outside)
🇩🇪 A leading German Reform rabbi said he would suspend his duties as head of a rabbinical seminary after being ensnared in a sexual harassment scandal. The allegations come amid a broad reckoning in America about how Jewish institutions have handled sexual harassment and assault claims. (JTA)
🎬 The old Hollywood saying “write Yiddish, cast British” is being revisited amid a broader discussion of representation. But Jewish roles are still going to non-Jewish actors like Oscar Isaac, Kathryn Hahn and Al Pacino. Barry Levinson, who recently cast Danny DeVito in a Jewish role, said: “If somebody gives a great performance, I don’t personally care if they’re Jewish or not.” (Vanity Fair)
What else we’re reading ➤ On Mother’s Day, this rabbi longed for her own turn at being a mom … Israel is advancing the passage of its first climate bill … Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon 5, visited the Western Wall on Sunday, ahead of two concerts in Israel this week.
ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: Enovid-10 became the first oral contraceptive approved by the FDA on May 9, 1960. Gregory Goodwin Pincus, a biochemist, co-invented the pill with John Rock, a gynecologist. Pincus had been working on reproductive systems for decades: in 1934, his in-vitro fertilization of rabbits was met with public skepticism; he was compared to both Dr. Frankenstein and the dystopian scientists of Aldous Huxley’s just-released “Brave New World.”
VIDEO OF THE DAY In this Smithsonian Channel video for Jewish American Heritage Month, Cameron Bernstein, a fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, talks about how her family eagerly read the Forverts but felt they had to keep Yiddish away from their children so they could become “true Americans.” Fast forward a generation or two to Bernstein, who learned Yiddish in college and celebrates it on TikTok. Watch the video ➤
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Thanks to Nora Berman, PJ Grisar, Jacob Kornbluh, Rukhl Schaechter and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].
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